ii2 THE GUN: AFIELD AND AFLOAT 



land in order to increase their wheat-growing capacity 

 to the utmost possible limit. This wheat-growing fever 

 lasted without intermission until the tension came to be 

 finally relieved by the historic conflict on the field of 

 Waterloo. But the damage, so far as the rooting out 

 of the bustard was concerned, had then been well nigh 

 completed, the exigencies of the agriculturist having 

 caused the dispersion or destruction of practically the 

 whole of the native race of British bustards. 



By traversing one or two of the natural history records 

 of the period, it will be observed that this process of 

 extirpation was chiefly consummated during the last 

 quarter of the eighteenth century. In 1777 Pennant 

 stated that bustards inhabited the open parts of the 

 south and east of England. The fact of Pennant's 

 writings being contemporaneous with the establishment 

 of the Bath and West of England Agricultural Society, 

 of the Highland Society in 1784, and of the National 

 Board of Agriculture in 1793, goes to show that the 

 subsequent decadence of the native race of bustards 

 proceeded step by step with the cultivation of greater 

 areas of arable land, and the evolution generally of 

 modern principles of agriculture. Some twenty-five 

 years later than the first-mentioned date Montagu, a 

 well-known naturalist, writing early in the nineteenth 

 century, reported the bustards to be then " found only 

 upon the large extensive plains, and are almost extinct, 

 except upon those of Wiltshire, where they are become 

 very scarce within these few years." 



This melancholy tale relative to the disappearance of 

 our aboriginal bustards is now all but completed. The 

 last bustard's nest was found upon the Yorkshire Wolds 

 in 1825, and in the following year the sole survivor of 



